10 ways applicant tracking systems help employers

The Hire Team

Published June 27, 2019

A good applicant tracking system (ATS) has the potential to
transform your hiring process—increasing productivity, lowering
costs, and streamlining your activities. In fact, 94% of
recruiters and hiring managers report that using an ATS does just
that, according to Capterra.

Before you can enjoy the benefits of an ATS, you'll need to secure
approval from leadership to purchase the tool. Gain organizational
buy-in for an ATS by explaining to senior leaders exactly how the
tool will benefit your company as a whole and help achieve
cross-functional goals.

To help you make a case for this recruiting software, we've broken
down the ten most powerful benefits you can expect from an applicant
tracking system. Persuasively communicate these key advantages to
senior leadership, and you'll encourage them to invest in an
applicant tracking system.

1. Keeps recruitment activity in one location

Without an ATS, your hiring tasks are divided between siloed tools.
You have to open a word processor to view resumes and cover letters,
a calendar application to schedule interviews, send emails to
communicate with applicants, just to name a few.

Switching back and forth between these tools is not just
time-consuming, it's risky. Working among multiple applications
means you're more likely to make errors as you copy and paste
information from one to the other, resulting in incorrect data
entry.

An ATS is the central location for all of your recruitment
processes. Each applicant tracking system provides a dashboard with
candidate profiles, your schedule, job postings, reporting, and
more—all in one place.

By centralizing your recruitment activity, an ATS helps you work
more efficiently and improve data accuracy. You can quickly move
from task to task in the dashboard, and your records stay consistent
since you don't need to manually transfer them.

2. Speeds up your time-to-hire

Job seekers are eager to move forward with the hiring process. If
you move them through each hiring stage quickly, they're less likely
to drop off and pursue other job opportunities with competitors.

A quick time-to-hire also saves your organization money. The less
time you spend searching for candidates, the smaller your
recruitment costs, like job board fees.

An applicant tracking system speeds up time-to-hire by automating
many hiring tasks. The tool can schedule interviews, email job
candidates, and more on its own, so recruiters have more time to
focus on complex activities.

Hiring is a team effort—hiring managers, recruiters, and
interviewers each have distinct tasks that collectively make it
possible to hire a great candidate.

To do their job well, these team members must be able to communicate
easily about candidates. For example, a recruiter can't review
candidates unless they speak with the hiring manager and learn which
qualifications are most desired in applicants. Likewise, a hiring
manager can't fully evaluate an applicant unless they get feedback
from interviewers.

Applicant tracking systems capture applicant data in one place, so
the entire team can stay synced throughout the entire process. They
can stay updated on candidate interviewing—scheduling, feedback—and
even chat with each other inside the recruitment software.

With these collaboration features, an ATS enables your team to sync
on job applicants and move top candidates through the pipeline
quickly.

4. Consistently communicates with candidates

Regularly communicating with applicants strengthens your employer
reputation. Promptly responding to candidates' messages and updating
them on their application status shows that your company respects
their time and recognizes the effort required in the application
process. With this good impression, they're more likely to accept a
job offer, or speak highly of your company, even if they're not
hired.

Customize a template for every stage of the hiring process, whether
it's scheduling an interview or sending a rejection letter. Because
an ATS already has the candidate's information stored, you can fire
off these emails with just one click.

5. Integrates with the tools you already use

HR teams use a number of tools to successfully hire and onboard
candidates. Calendar programs and human resource management systems
(HRIS) are just a couple examples. Without the benefit of
integration, you must manually move data between the programs. This
data entry isn't just time-consuming—it also means hiring records
are more likely to be incorrect due to human error.

Integration makes administrative HR tasks easier and faster.

Human resource management systems (HRIS): Transition a
candidate's data from your ATS to your HRIS once they're hired and
automatically build a profile for the new hire.

Job boards: Post jobs to popular boards directly from your ATS.

Calendar systems: Schedule interviews and other appointments
without having to switch between your calendar and the ATS.

By integrating with other HR tools, an ATS helps hiring teams save
time and maintain accurate records.

6. Helps sort through candidate records intuitively

If you don't use an ATS, reviewing candidate records is a cumbersome
process. Whether you’d like to sort candidates by source (job board,
employee referral), location, years of experience, etc., you likely
will have separate filing system for each category.

With an ATS, your entire candidate database is searchable.

With an ATS, your entire candidate database is searchable. Many
tools offer a number of unique search filters, such as interview
scores or applicants who declined offers, along with basic criteria,
such as previous roles or degrees, to discover strong candidates.
Some tools even utilize AI-driven keyword search functions, so users
can find candidate profiles, even if there isn't an exact keyword
match. For example, searching for a “front end engineer” could bring
up a candidate with synonyms listed in their resume, such as
JavaScript, HTML, or CSS, rather than exclusively surfacing
candidates with the keyword “front end engineer.”

With these robust search features, an ATS simplifies talent
acquisition. The tool can find candidates who match whatever
qualifications you're looking for in a matter of seconds.

7. Builds reports to help you improve

To improve your recruiting process over time, you must consistently
measure your hiring activities. Monitoring your performance provides
insights on the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of your
recruitment, so you know where to make adjustments.

Manually creating these reports takes hours and may result in
errors. Applicant tracking systems, on the other hand, can instantly
generate reports based on the metrics you choose. The data in these
reports is pulled from your most current hiring activity, so it's
always accurate.

The reports that applicant tracking systems create offer powerful
insights for recruiting teams. For example, many systems offer
interactive reports that allow you to see variations of data, so you
can dig deep and understand the details and trends behind your
hiring metrics.

Using an ATS to pull reports simplifies the process of assessing
data. Just by clicking “export,” you're able to evaluate a number of
critical metrics—recruitment source quality, time-to-hire, team
productivity—and determine how to improve your hiring process.

8. Increases visibility on job boards and social media

Today's job market is competitive, so employers can't rely on a
single job board to promote their openings. Instead, they must post
roles on multiple job boards to maximize role visibility.

Posting openings through each separate site is a time suck for
recruiters. Uploading the job description, company details, and
payment information (to cover job board fees) takes at least 15
minutes for every opening. Tracking the performance of your openings
on each job board is also tedious—you have to log into each site,
copy the data from your account, and paste it into a reporting
spreadsheet.

An ATS eases the process of sharing job openings with automatic
posting flows. Most tools are integrated with major job boards, such
as ZipRecruiter and Indeed, so you don't have to exit your ATS to
post to these sites.

Today’s job market is competitive, so employers can't rely on a
single job board to promote their openings.

Even better, the integration automatically tracks the performance of
your postings for you. Don't think one of your favorite niche job
boards can integrate with an ATS? Use an ATS-generated trackable
link in your job posting instead. The ATS will track the
effectiveness of the job board in its reports, too.

9. Standardizes the interview process

Using similar interview questions and assessment rubrics both
reduces hiring biases and improves the candidate experience. All
applicants are measured according to the same standards, rather than
interviewers' individual preferences, and the interview process runs
smoothly.

To standardize the hiring process, create a consistent interview
evaluation form through your ATS. Rather than sharing feedback
through their own unique styles, team members will be required to
evaluate candidates using the form fields and rating system that
appear in the tool.

With this formatting, you ensure that hiring members are assessing
applicants according to the same criteria for fairness across the
interview process.

10. Sends reminders to help you stay on track

Recruiters are busy promoting job openings, reviewing applications,
and meeting with hiring managers. Unfortunately, their less-urgent
to-do list items are easily forgotten, no matter how necessary their
completion is to moving the hiring process forward.

Notifications from an applicant tracking system can keep you and
your hiring team on track. For example, receiving automated
interview-feedback reminder emails and notifications may be just the
nudge you and other interviewers need to leave notes about
applicants you recently met.

You can set custom reminders in the ATS, too. For example, reminding
yourself to reconnect with a rejected candidate in six months after
they've gained more experience.

With reminders and notifications, your hiring team will find it easy
to stay productive and hire top candidates.

Make recruitment faster and simpler with an ATS

Applicant tracking systems help employers by organizing the hiring
process, streamlining administrative tasks, and enabling
collaboration—every company could benefit. It's time to take the
next step and invest in an ATS. Communicate the advantages of
an ATS to senior leadership, so they're encouraged to invest in
one. Once your company is on board with the tool, your recruitment
team will be able to hire top talent more quickly and seamlessly.

About Hire by Google

Hire is a recruiting app by Google that uses AI to make the hiring process faster and simpler. Because it is designed specifically for G Suite users, with Gmail, Google Calendar and other G Suite integrations, Hire streamlines administrative tasks so that your team can hire the best people, faster.